![]() ![]() In particular, a constantly growing number of studies have provided evidence that musical expertise may play a key role in supporting processing of pronunciation ( Asaridou and McQueen 2013). 1995 Muñoz 2014 Shoemaker 2014 see Suzukida 2021 for a review). Previous research suggests that a wide variety of factors relate to L2 pronunciation skills such as individual differences in age of acquisition, amount of exposure to the target language, number of foreign language classes attended, and motivation ( Flege et al. We then investigated the potential influence of individual differences in music perception abilities, singing abilities, and phonetic aptitude on learners’ L2 accent faking abilities. To measure L2 phonological awareness, we used an accent faking task where L1 German speakers were asked to fake an L2 English accent while reading L1 German sentences ( Coumel et al. Thus, in the present study, we decided to examine which factors could relate to learners’ L2 phonological awareness. 2014) and to production of more comprehensible L2 speech ( Venkatagiri and Levis 2007). ![]() 2014), relates to accuracy in production of L2 sounds ( Baker and Trofimovich 2006 Mora et al. Previous research suggests that an individual’s L2 phonological awareness, their knowledge of the L2 phonological system at the segmental and suprasegmental levels, and of the phonetic differences between the sounds of their first and their second language ( Kivistö-de Souza 2015 Mora et al. In order to build efficient educational strategies to teach L2 pronunciation, it is necessary to understand which factors lead to successful acquisition of L2 pronunciation and how such acquisition relates to language aptitude. However, achieving high levels of L2 pronunciation skills is one of the most challenging tasks late L2 learners face during their language learning journey (cf. 2012 Gluszek and Dovidio 2010 Lev-Ari and Keysar 2010). ![]() 2016), L2 speakers can be perceived as less credible, less educated, less intelligent and less competent than native (L1) speakers due to their foreign-accented speech ( Dewaele and McCloskey 2015 Fraser and Kelly 2012 Fuertes et al. While pronunciation is not the only factor that determines whether speech produced by second language (L2) speakers is comprehensible or not ( Saito et al. This study also proposes a new combination of tests to obtain a well-rounded assessment of individual differences in phonetic aptitude.īeing able to speak and communicate in a foreign language is more essential than ever as a consequence of a steadily growing multilingual world. This suggests that being able to sing could help learners produce and memorise highly accurate L2 sounds, although their performance could also partly be explained by innate learning capacities such as phonetic aptitude. A regression analysis revealed that singing abilities and phonetic aptitude could predict participants’ English faking abilities. Their phonetic aptitude was assessed with a combination of phonological short-term memory tasks (forward and backward digit span tasks), and language perception and production tasks, in which participants needed to process and imitate sounds from unfamiliar languages. We measured their musical abilities with the AMMA test and their singing abilities with two singing tasks and a self-report questionnaire. To measure participants’ L2 phonological awareness, we used an accent faking paradigm, where participants were asked to speak in their native language (German) while imitating a strong L2 accent (English). This study examined how second language (L2) speakers’ individual differences in music perception abilities, singing abilities and phonetic aptitude relate to their L2 phonological awareness. ![]()
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